by Jon Evans
"Who is she?" Toro asked.
"She's taking care of me. A rat bit me and I was poisoned. I'm not well yet. I owe her my life."
"I thought you looked weak and skinny. You should eat more. Want me to bring you an acorn?"
"That," Patch said, "would be wonderful."
"Coming right up." Toro flapped his wings and flew away.
White stared at Patch with amazement. "You speak Bird?"
"I do."
"You're friends with a bluejay?"
"I am."
After a moment she said, "Yesterday you said that you were in the underworld beneath the mountains when Lord Snout himself bit you, and you were saved by cats."
"That's exactly what happened."
"You don't smell mad. Or delirious."
"I'm not," Patch said. "I've just had rather a lot of things happen to me lately."
"I see. Including blackblood disease. Well, you won't have to go through that again. If you have it once, and you're one of the few that survives, you become immune."
"I'm glad to hear it," Patch said with feeling.
White smiled at him wistfully. Then she looked down to the ground below and asked, "Well, now you're home, what do you think you'll do?"
"I don't know. You say my tribe is gone … I don't know what to do."
"You can stay here as long as you want, if you like. My drey is a little higher up. There's plenty of space in it. I mean, just until you figure things out."
"That's very kind of you," Patch said. "But I do have my own drey. If no one else has taken it. And I need to find out what happened to my friends and family."
"Oh. Yes. Of course. I'm sorry to, I didn't mean, I know you don't want to share a drey with an albino half-tail, I didn't mean to offend you, I'm so stupid, I don't know what I was -"
"What do you mean?" Patch asked, bemused. "Offend me? I owe you my life. And after the things I've seen and done on my way home, believe me, I don't care about your fur or your tail. I'm an outcast too. I mean, if you're right, I don't even have a tribe to be outcast from. I'd like to stay. But I have to try to find my family and friends."
"Oh," White said, sounding relieved. She paused. "I understand. Well, not really. I've never had family. Or friends. But I can imagine."
Patch said, "You have a friend now."
She looked at him and smiled.
There was a fluttering of wings and Toro landed, keeping Patch between himself and White. He released the acorn he held in his claws. Patch caught it before it rolled off the elm tree and devoured it greedily. There was no conversation while he ate.
When Patch looked up from the meaty acorn, his belly now half-satisfied, Toro was staring silently at the sky, still as a statue. Perplexed, Patch turned to look at White - and she too was staring silently upwards; she too had gone still; and deep terror was etched into her face.
Patch lifted his head to see what they were looking at.
There was a red-tailed hawk perched on the branch directly above them.
"Patch son of Silver," Karmerruk said. "We meet again."
3. A Prince of the Air
"Have you come to break your oath?" Patch asked.
"No. Nor will I prey on either of your friends."
Toro relaxed slightly.
"It's all right," Patch said to White. "This is Karmerruk. He's … an acquaintance."
White's pink eyes were very wide as she stared at Patch, and then the hawk, and back at Patch again.
"Then what do you want?" Patch asked, switching back to Bird. "Have you come to carry me back to the Kingdom of Madness again?"
"No, Patch son of Silver. On the contrary, I was very glad when I looked down at this elm and saw you had returned to the Center Kingdom. I never thought you would be able to return over so great a distance. I salute your strength and courage. As I said before, you have the heart of a hawk. But that is not why I have come. I have come to ask you a favour."
"A favour?" Patch asked, bewildered. "What can I possibly do for you?"
"You are a mammal who speaks Bird better than some birds I know. It is a rare talent, Patch, and a valuable one. I wish to communicate with your king."
"Which king?"
"The true king. King Thorn."
"But you work -" Patch stopped himself, remembering their last conversation. "But you are associated with Snout."
"No longer. On the contrary. I swear to you by the blood of my nestlings that I seek the death of that rat lord. I have ever since I began to learn some worrisome truths and terrible rumours. Ever since I saved your life."
Patch thought that 'saved your life' was an extremely skewed description of their previous encounter, but supposed there was no gain to be had from arguing. "What truths?"
"The truths I would communicate to your king."
"You may as well tell them to me. You're going to have to anyways."
Karmerruk paused. "I suppose that's true. I'm sure you know already that the rats have conspired with the rebel squirrels against King Thorn. What you may not know is that the rats are also killing any mice they find, and chipmunks too. Not for food. Killing them and leaving their carcasses to rot."
"Why would they do that?" Patch asked, surprised.
"I don't know. But I do know that I do not like having my food slaughtered by anyone but me. I know I do not like the terrible rumours I have begun to hear in the wind, that the King Beneath is real, and the Queen of All Cats has arisen. I know I do not like the monstrous flock of crows that has occupied so much of this kingdom. I do not yet know what lies at the heart of all this, but I know that I would speak with your King Thorn. I need you to be my translator."
"Can't you find someone else?"
"Someone else?" Karmerruk was offended. "I give you the opportunity to be a voice that speaks for hawks and royalty, and you ask me to find someone else? There is no one else, Patch. I have looked."
Patch sighed. "All right."
"Excellent. Then I shall take you to the Ramble -"
"No!" Patch exclaimed. "I'm sick. I've been poisoned. I won't have you carrying me around like a mouse you're about to eat. I'll walk to the Ramble when I'm ready."
"When you're ready? And when will that be?"
Patch considered. "Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day."
"Maybe tomorrow? The decisive battle could come today! We dare not wait!"
"Then go find someone else."
"I told you," Karmerruk said darkly, "there is no one else. I will not have your stubborn selfishness stand in my way!"
"If you take me there now I'll be no use. I nearly died of the blackblood disease. I have no strength."
Karmerruk looked at him. At length he said, "One day, Patch son of Silver. I will give you one day. You will go tomorrow or I will carry you there myself."
Patch sighed. "All right."
Karmerruk frowned. Then he beat his great wings and soared into the air. The backwash knocked Toro off the elm tree, and the bluejay had to dive down, circle around, and fly back up to the branch.
"What happened?" White asked.
Patch translated.
"Oh, no," White said. "You can't. You see what King Thorn's soldiers did to me. They're awful, awful! And besides, you're much too weak to travel!"
"I'm much better," Patch said, but although what he said was true, he had gotten stronger even since waking up, he had to admit that he was still weak enough that the prospect of travelling all the way to the Ramble was quite daunting.
4. Towards the Ramble
Early the next morning, six days after he had collapsed on the very edge of death, Patch descended slowly back to earth while White watched anxiously from above. When he finally reached the ground he waved goodbye with his tail and set out across the grass towards the wild Ramble in the heart of the Center Kingdom. He walked with only a slight limp, but he knew climbing would be painful and running impossible.
The morning was bright and beautiful. Despite Patch's many worries, despite
the terrible news of Redeye's victory in the Battle of the Meadow and the destruction of the entire Treetops tribe, despite his fears for the fates of Twitch and Tuft and Brighteyes and above all his mother Silver, it was wonderful to be home again, breathing the rich spring air, walking across the green fields and beneath the majestic trees of the Center Kingdom. Patch felt almost like he had never left, as if his perilous journey across half the world had been nothing but a terrible nightmare.
There were no other animals around. This corner of the Kingdom was always quiet. The Dungeon was nearby; and animals stayed away from the Dungeon as if its steel walls might reach out and swallow them whole. Even Patch, who had spent much of his life roving around the Kingdom in restless exploration, had been here only two or three times before, and had not remained long.
He walked northwards, towards the Ramble, until he caught a whiff of the unforgettable smell of the Dungeon: the mingled scents of dozens of alien creatures, all stinking of madness and despair. Uneasy, Patch detoured west rather than come any nearer. His wounded leg was aching like a bad cramp by the time he reached the stately procession of massive elm trees that led to the Ramble. These elm trees formed Patch's favourite sky-road in all the Center Kingdom; but he was earthbound by his wounded leg, reduced to trudging on the grass beneath.
The colonnade of elms ended at a concrete plaza adorned by various manmade constructions. On the other side of the plaza was one of the great automobile highways that ran right across the Center Kingdom. It was one of those days when humans had invaded the Center Kingdom in droves, and he had to plan his route carefully. Humans no longer held any great fear for him, but some of them had dogs. Patch went around the plaza, staying on grass. There were no automobiles, but he still had to wait before crossing the highway. A huge horse was passing, moving steadily despite the burden it dragged, a huge wooden box on wheels. Three humans rode atop the box.
Patch stared up at the huge animal as it clopped past. He was always awed by horses' enormous size. Most said they were the largest animals in the Center Kingdom - though Patch had heard whispers that somewhere within the Dungeon, imprisoned by walls the size of tall trees, there lurked pale and gargantuan predators from the uttermost North, bigger than any horse. Once Patch had dismissed those rumours, but since his encounter with Siva the tiger, he was no longer so certain in his disbelief.
Past the highway he continued up a wide and grassy hill dotted with cherry trees and shot through with huge granite outcroppings. The bright sun was approaching its blue-sky zenith by the time Patch crested the summit and looked across the Narrow Sea to the raw and wild Ramble, the sprawling heart of the Center Kingdom. He frowned when he saw that the trees of the Ramble were thick with crows. Crows were harmless, as far as he knew, but it didn't seem right that they had occupied King Thorn's territory.
He began to move northwest, intending to circumnavigate the Narrow Sea and approach the Ramble from the west; but he had not gone far when he encountered a cold northeasterly wind that blew directly to him from the Ramble, across the Narrow Sea. This wind stopped Patch for a long moment in mid-step, as if he had turned to stone. It carried a stench of blood and death so overpowering that his eyes watered and his ears seemed to ring with dissonant noise.
Something was wrong in the Ramble, terribly wrong.
5. The Ramble
Patch's instinct, strangely, was not to flee in terror from the stench of slaughter; rather, he felt compelled to rush immediately into the Ramble, as if he was desperately needed. Instead of continuing the long way, around the water, he changed his course and trotted straight for the bridge that spanned the Narrow Sea.
A mere moon-cycle earlier, no squirrel in all the Center Kingdom would have dared that bridge no matter what the provocation. It was a human pathway. But in that time, Patch had travelled along human highways, stowed away in a human boat, escaped a locked steel cage, slept on metal staircases, perched on moving automobiles, and ridden with humans through underground tunnels. He saw no dogs nearby; and while the gross corpulence of humans still unnerved him, this was overwhelmed by his powerful urge to hurry. He crossed the wooden bridge as fast as he could on his pain-streaked leg, heedless of the dozen humans who stared amazed at Patch as he wove his way between them.
Once across he left the human trails and followed a dry watercourse up a hill, heading for the huge willow tree that had housed the court of King Thorn when Patch had last visited the Ramble. The thick reek of blood and battle was so intense that he had to breathe through his mouth, but he sensed no other signs of violence. The silence was absolute but for the skittering crows and a few clumsy humans, and the Ramble's dense tangle of close-grown trees, granite mounds, steep ravines, high grasses and thick underbrush was like an opaque wall.
Then Patch saw a group of crows squatting on a rock, clustered so close together they looked like a single squirming knot of black feathers. Trickling bloodstains were visible beneath their skeletal feet. The grass and bushes beyond them shuddered with spasmodic motion; there were animals moving within.
Patch hesitated a moment, then plunged into the grassy undergrowth, fighting his way through dense brush and fallen branches. He soon came upon five crows arrayed in a tight circle, eating something. As he passed closer he realized it was a dead squirrel. Beyond them, another three crows pecked at the corpse of a rat. The ground was damp with blood. The crows interrupted their feeding just long to glance up at Patch with black and shining eyes, and then returned to their carrion feast. Patch hesitated a moment, not knowing what to say or do, then pushed his way around and past the feeding crows, deeper into the thick grass, moving fast and blindly. He could hardly see more than a tail-length in any direction, but he passed a dozen squirrels and rats en route to the willow tree. All were dead and covered with crows.
Once at the willow tree, he climbed desperately, hardly noticing that his poisoned leg hurt like fire. His heartbeats felt like thunderclaps, and his head was buzzing with panic. When he climbed out onto the pale bark of the first branch, he looked down onto a field of carnage. Shifting clots of crows were visible as far as he could see, feeding on scores, no, hundreds of corpses. Other crows lined the branches of the Ramble's trees, waiting their turn, while their kin below gorged themselves on the dead until they could eat no further.
There was a crow perched only a tail-length away from Patch. It was even blacker than those Patch had seen in the Hidden Kingdom, so dark that it seemed more a bird-shaped piece of the night than a real animal.
"What happened here?" Patch asked desperately, in Bird. "When?"
It turned its head towards Patch, fixed him with its blank and glossy eyes, smiled and said nothing.
Patch took a step towards it. "Tell me what happened!"
The crow's dry cackle sounded like the splintering of dead bones. It spread its wings, stepped off the branch, and flew away.
"Help," a soft voice gasped from above, a squirrel's voice. "Oh, light of the moon, help me, they will eat me alive."
6. Taildancer
Patch looked up and saw faltering motion in the branches above, obscured by the long green curtains of the willow tree's leaves. He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth against the agony in his leg, and climbed up the willow's trunk. In the crook where a big branch met the trunk, two crows were pecking at an animal that lay twitching and gasping in the crook of a big branch. It was so covered in blood, its face and fur were so badly torn, that it took Patch a moment to recognize it as a squirrel.
"Get away from there!" he shouted in Bird, and charged at the crows. His bad leg buckled beneath him, and he almost fell, but the ferocity of his cry drove the black birds away; they leapt away from the willow and glided off to find other prey.
"Help me," the squirrel groaned. She was young, barely adult. "Oh, please, help."
Patch knew at a glance that her wounds were mortal. He saw bones and organs through the many rents in her fur.
"I'm sorry," he said.
"I don't want to die. This can't be my time. I'm too young."
Patch didn't say anything.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"I am Patch son of Silver, of the Seeker clan, of the Treetops tribe. Who are you that asks?"
"I am Taildancer daughter of Shine, of the Runner clan, of the Meadow Tribe."
"The Meadow tribe? But this is the Ramble - what happened here? When?"
"War," Taildancer said. "Last night. There was a battle. It was awful. We attacked the Ramble. I didn't want to. None of us wanted to. But they made us."
"Who?"
"King Redeye, and Sniffer, and the rats. We had to obey. They only give food to squirrels who fight. So many of the Meadow have starved."
Patch blinked with confusion. "Starved? But it's spring! There's food everywhere!"
"No," she said. "They take it all. We have to give whatever we find to the rats and the Gobblers, and they guard it, and we're only allowed to eat what they give us. They kill squirrels who keep food, or who bury nuts, sometimes just for going somewhere alone. Sometimes for no reason at all. It isn't just the rats. Other squirrels, Redeye's clan, the Gobblers, they spy on the rest of us, they tell the rats everything."
Patch stared at her in silent horror.
"They made us attack last night, in the dark," Taildancer said. Her voice was growing weaker. "There were owls. We surprised them, they were sleeping. We beat them, they ran away to the north. We thought the battle was over. We'd taken their trees. But then the rats came after every squirrel who was left. Meadow, Ramble, they didn't care. There were so many of them. I killed three but there were so many. All I could hear was screaming, everywhere below, I thought it would drive me mad. Then it was quiet for a little while. Then the sun rose, and the crows came, and the screaming started again. It's quiet now, though, isn't it, Patch son of Silver? It's peaceful."
"Yes," Patch whispered. "It's peaceful."
